by T. R. Harris
Adam didn’t feel like arguing.
The two men wrapped arms and legs around the smooth pole and slid down with little effort. Arieel took off her blouse—much to the shock and awe of the men—and tied it around the pole. She climbed on, placing her shoulders within the loop made by the blouse as extra security it case she slipped. It was an incredible sight as she began to work her sensual body to the other roof, using an erotic form of horizontal pole dancing. Then just before she reached the end, her feet slipped off. The falling momentum pulled her hands away as well, until only an arm hooked in the thin fabric of the blouse was the only thing keeping her from falling to the street below. Riyad and Coop reached out, dangling over the abyss themselves. The angle of the pole helped Arieel slide down farther until the men could take her by the arms. They pulled, each from an opposite side of the pole. Arieel’s head crashed against the metal, sending a loud reverberation through the length. She slumped, momentarily knocked unconscious.
“I’ve got her!” Copernicus yelled out.
“No, I have her,” Riyad countered.
“Somebody decide who’s going to rescue the near-naked sexpot,” Sherri called out from the other roof.
Coop smiled, embarrassed and self-conscious. “You take her, Riyad. I’m cool.”
A few moments later, Sherri expertly shimmied down the pole. She had to make it over the short lining wall on her own, since the two men were huddled over the still blouse-less Formilian, trying to revive her.
Next came the still groggy Juirean. Sherri helped him off the pole.
Adam was the last to cross. With blood still leaking from various parts of his body, he didn’t have to do more than hold on, the shaft sufficiently lubricated to send him sliding down and into the waiting arms of his friends.
105
They didn’t hang around after that. With Coop and Riyad supporting Adam’s damaged body between them, the team entered the building and looked for a way down.
Adam grimaced when a thought hit him: What if this was the police headquarters for the planet. After all, it was located next door to the main government facility, the one housing their Aris god.
They never got the chance to find out. Instead they located a convenient set of stairs and began to make their way down. Adam was carried most of the way, which suited him fine. Although he could feel his enhanced body working feverishly to repair the damage he’d suffered, at this point it was only allowing him to tolerate the pain a little better. Healing would come later…if he lived.
Riyad cracked the door open at the ground floor and peaked out. There were dozens of Klin around, curious about the activity taking place next door. Fortunately, none of these Klin were armed. They were bureaucrats, not warriors.
Riyad kicked at the bannister lining the stairs until he broke off the top railing. Then he took the shorter vertical pieces and handed them out to the team, giving them each a four-foot-long club. He handed one to Adam, who used his as a crutch instead.
“We get to the street and commandeer the first vehicle we see,” Riyad said, now the informal leader of the team with Adam pretty well incapacitated. Everyone nodded and readied themselves. He opened the door.
The Klin in the lobby didn’t know what hit them. Clubs were wielded and heads smashed. The team blasted through the crowd and into the daylight outside.
There were dozens of vehicles around; however, most were local police or military units, identified by the ubiquitous lights on their roofs. In every society, emergency vehicles had to have some way of warning traffic out of their way. It was no different on this world or in this universe.
A uniformed Klin was standing at the opened door of his vehicle, speaking on a communicator. He noticed the commotion from the building just as Riyad reached him. The silver of the metal club met the silver the Klin’s skin, which was soon splattered with red blood.
Riyad tossed the dead Klin aside and slipped into the driver’s seat. Coop raced around to the other side and got in. Sherri opened the back door and shoved Adam inside, followed immediately by Arieel, Tidus and her. Three people, all piled on top of the injured Adam Cain, was far too many for the small backseat. Adam cried out in pain.
“Someone get your knee off my balls!”
People shifted. It helped…a little.
The controls to the police car were much like those in other advanced vehicles; a central joystick, with acceleration and braking peddles on the floorboard. Riyad engaged the car and shot forward, catching the fender of another car before he straightened out. Others noticed the team taking control of the car and began to react.
Sherri struggled to lower the side window but couldn’t figure out how to do it. So, she took her metal club and smashed the glass. Then hanging halfway out the portal, she laid her weapon into the gut of a Klin cop as the car sped past. She caught another one across the side of the head, while missing two other times. She literally growled from frustration with her strikeouts.
Adam had had enough. He was in such terrible shape that he just went ahead and threw up. Arieel and Tidus fought to get away from him and the incredibly putrid stench. Coop was slammed into the windshield when the huge Juirean tried to climb over the backseat to get away from the foul-smelling discharge.
“Dammit, Tidus!” Copernicus yelled. “You almost broke my neck.”
“His stomach fluids! We cannot tolerate such.”
“Deal with it,” Sherri ordered.
“Quiet, everyone,” Riyad yelled. “I need to concentrate.”
“To the left,” Coop said. “That’s the way we came in.”
“I think you’re right.”
They entered a type of Klin freeway. The trip from the spaceport to the government building had been a short one. It was only a moment later when the skyline parted and the expansive grounds of the landing field came into view.
Adam wriggled his way into a sitting position. He looked out the back window.
“The cops are coming up fast behind us,” he said. The flashing lights of several vehicles could be seen weaving their way through the light traffic. “How about slowing them down?”
Riyad got the message. He swerved into the back-right panel of one of the cars in the lane next to him. Although all the Klin vehicles ran on some form of lifting field, the car began to fishtail. It hit another vehicle and a moment later, the wreck had cascaded into a lane-blocking barrier, with Riyad and the team racing ahead of the confusion.
The road elevated at this point, giving Riyad a view of the spaceport grounds. He could see the Davion—along with the dozen or so military vehicles surrounding it. Armed soldiers milled around outside, having received word that the fugitives were headed this way.
There were more waiting at the front gate.
“Let’s see if this thing can really float on air,” he mumbled.
Before anyone could react, he’d crashed through a light metal barrier and had the car flying through the air, over the fence to the spaceport, and dropping to the ground. It landed on what felt like a bed of cotton candy. Then it floated up, before settling down a little more. It took five waves before the car was steady again, racing along the tarmac toward the Davion.
“That worked.”
“The ship’s covered; head for that long Klin vessel to the right instead,” Adam ordered.
“We don’t have time to learn a whole new set of controls,” Copernicus pointed out.
“That’s okay; I have an idea.”
The car slid up next to the open door of the long Klin starship. There were three crewmembers outside, watching the activity farther down the row of ships. They attempted to run back inside when several aliens piled out of the car, armed with metal sticks. They didn’t make it.
Coop and Riyad rushed inside and made it to the pilothouse.
The controls followed a logical design. “This looks like something,” Copernicus said, activating a panel. In the distant reaches of the ship, generators began to whine.
The guards at the
Davion saw the stolen police vehicle slide behind the larger transport, followed a moment later by a blast of air from the lifting vents. The ship was preparing for liftoff.
The Klin ran for their vehicles, leading a mass stampede toward the larger ship. They surrounded the entrance, while armed troops took up positions. Someone tossed a grenade into the open hatchway. After the smoke cleared, Klin soldiers entered.
Everyone was too engrossed with the operation at the transport vessel, that they failed to notice the group of strangely dressed aliens running across the field toward the disk-shaped starship. The rag-tag team disappeared through the doorway at the bottom of the supporting pedestal.
Coop slipped into the pilot seat.
“That’s my job,” Riyad said.
“In a minute,” Coop replied. “But first…this.”
He began to work the controls. No one knew the systems better than Coop, although Riyad was the better pilot.
“What are you doing?” Tidus asked. He was among the rest of the team taking whatever seats they could on the circular bridge.
“Building up a pre-boost,” he answered. “It will give a nice little jump at liftoff and won’t be noticed outside as it builds.”
“Chemical or gravity?” Riyad asked.
“Both. Okay, here we go.”
There was a tremendous explosion outside the ship, followed by a billowing cloud of white smoke roiling up from below. The Davion shot upwards, taking the compensators by surprise. Then the gravity-drive kicked in, a shallow well at first, and with the ship only about two hundred feet off the ground. The gas cloud disappeared in the blink of an eye, sucked into the tiny series of singularities in the sky above the Davion.
Coop pulled the ship over to the right, lining up on a row of parked Klin vessels. He swept over them, causing the gravity-well to rip entire sections off the ships, while sending a trail of debris climbing into the air behind them. He angled up and away, leaving the long cloud of heavy metal remnants orphaned, with no place to go except down. They rained onto the other vessels, creating a mass of wreckage, death and confusion throughout the spaceport.
Coop slipped from the seat. “It’s all yours, buddy,” he said to Riyad, flashing his own white smile at his friend and teammate.
“We’re not out of the woods, yet,” Adam said. He was slumped in the command chair behind the pilot stations. The mental drugs were working better now. He wasn’t in as much pain, which wasn’t saying a lot.
Sherri was at the proximity screen.
“He’s right,” she said. “It looks like a fleet is massing, a couple of them: the Klin and the Olypon.”
The Davion was in space by now and racing for the outer boundary of the Klin star system. There were hundreds of ships in the region, but most were heading in-system, not out.
“They’re still assembling the fleet. They may not have too many units ready to come after us,” Adam said.
“Yeah, but they do have a few…and here they come,” Sherri said.
Fortunately, the chase vessels were behind them and not trying to block their path. Riyad sent max power to the generators, creating the deepest well possible.
“Still closing,” Sherri reported. “They’re a little faster than we are; however, they are following a nice little tight line behind us.”
Adam got the message. “Are there any mines aboard?” he asked the room.
“Five,” Sherri reported, having already pulled up the inventory.
“Okay, send out four. Keep one in reserve.”
Four tiny red dots appeared on the proximity screen, trailing out behind them. The mines really weren’t mines at all, but rather miniature faster-than-light torpedoes. They would lock onto a passing vessel and then engage their gravity-wells. Being nothing but engines and explosives, they were incredibly fast and able to overtake just about any starship.
A moment later, distant explosions showed up on the screen as flares of energy followed by the removal of target indicators. But there were more coming.
However, the mines had the desired effect. The Klin ships spread out and backed off, not knowing how many of the deadly torpedoes the invaders from the other universe were carrying.
“That won’t keep them back forever,” Sherri pointed out.
“Coop, Tidus, get to the cargo hold and find all the crates of spare parts we have,” Adam groaned. “Break them open and then dump the contents out the back.”
“Why should we do this,” Tidus asked.
“They’ll get caught up in our gravity-well and follow us,” Copernicus explained for Adam. “The Klin will detect them. They’ll think they’re more mines.”
“Exactly,” Adam confirmed.
“And what if we need the parts?”
“Then at least we’ll be alive to figure out what to do next,” Adam said. “Otherwise, it won’t mean shit.”
What followed was a tense, three-hour standoff as the Davion raced for the portal with the Klin a respectable distance to the rear.
As the time passed, Adam and the others came to the realization that the Klin weren’t prepared to launch an inter-dimensional war involving thousands of ships and crew. Each of the vessels called to the staging area had to be stocked with provisions, armament and troops, most of which were not stockpiled and ready to go. One couldn’t start a major war at the drop of a hat. It took preparation.
This also meant there was very little space traffic between the Klin world and the portal. Any ships in the area were now back in the system being tended to.
The Olypon fleet was a different story. Although small—numbering only forty-five ships—they’d come to this universe ready for action. This fleet had now taken up the pursuit of Adam and the team, although they were pretty far behind.
The other small force that had originally been sent after them was still being cautious. Adam didn’t know if this was because of the mines, or because they knew the portal timetable. Panur’s clock still ticked off the interval between openings. The next one was scheduled for seventy-two minutes from now.
“Slow down a little,” Adam said to Riyad. He was seated back in the comfortable command chair, looking like a reject from a mummy factory with all the bandages Sherri had placed on his battered body. He’d been given drugs, which helped to augment his natural pain suppressors. He was feeling much better. The rest of the team was off in other sections of the ship, taking advantage of the lull in the action.
“You want me to slow down?” Riyad questioned. “Are those drugs affecting your judgement?”
“We don’t want to get to the portal too much ahead of time,” Adam explained. “If we do, then the Klin can station themselves at the portal and keep us from passing through.”
“So timing is everything?”
“Always. The ships behind us will stay back, not wanting to meet the fate of their comrades.”
“What about the old Klin portal array?” Riyad asked. “The only reason there’s a seven-hour delay between transits is because they haven’t got the station operating yet. You know they will, and then they’ll have an open door between the universes.”
“We should have time for one run. Get whatever we have ready for the strike. We’ll hit it on the way to the portal.”
“And the Olypon?”
Adam knew what he meant. The aliens on the other side of the portal wouldn’t know of anything that has happened over the past seven hours, but they would be sitting there ready to either make the transit or to receive units from this universe. If the Davion made it through, it would rush headlong into the middle of a hornet’s nest of angry aliens.
“First things first,” Adam said. “Let’s take out the portal and worry about the Olypon
later.”
106
The crew was ready. Taking out the abandoned and unguarded portal array wouldn’t be the problem. It would be five minutes after that, when they transferred back to the Milky Way, when things would get hairy.
Riyad broug
ht the Davion to a hover above the surface of the monochrome moon, about ten miles from the array. Sherri sighted the flash cannon on the three tall towers and fired a quick burst. It was a hit. It would take a blind man—or a Klin—to miss a stationary target from this distance, Adam thought sarcastically. It wasn’t much of a challenge for a gunner of Sherri’s skill.
But the towers didn’t topple over. There was damage, but not enough to bring them down. Sherri fired again. The problem with flash weapons in a vacuum is they didn’t have much force behind their bolts. They relied more on melting through hulls and using the interior pressure within the target to create a massive explosion. It took another round before one of the towers leaned over, coming to rest against one of the others. That would do—for the towers. It required precise alignment to focus the energy required to open a portal.
The team still had one of the mines/torpedoes in reserve. Sherri locked in on the control building and released the weapon. It wasn’t required to transit to light speed, and instead took a leisurely path to the structure. On the screen, the team watched as the building disintegrated. There was no explosion of fire and smoke. Instead a billion pieces of debris shot out from a central point, the fragments landing in the powdery dust and causing an eruption of grey haze that soon obscured their view.
Adam scanned the countdown clock. Seventy-one seconds.
“Head for the portal, Riyad, just as we planned.”
Riyad nodded. He aimed the Davion for the surface of the moon, locating the jagged rim of a small impact crater. As he swept by, large chunks of ancient rock was pulled away, falling under the influence of the ship’s gravity-well. Riyad worked the controls gingerly, aligning the field until the trailing mass was firmly under his control, but not close enough to be overcome by the singularity. He pulled away from the moon, heading for a point in the blackness of space.
Adam Cain.
The voice in his mind was clear and powerful and caught him by surprise. He felt his side heat up from the activity of his ATD as it absorbed the intense signal from the Aris Kracion.